In case you haven’t heard, the Rapture is slated to occur on May 21st
of this year. On that Saturday, Jesus will call his faithful and true followers up to heaven to spend eternity with Him. Left on the Earth will be the evil souls who have willfully rejected Jesus and hatefully lived against His righteous standards.

In the February issue of The Minnesota Atheist, life member Matthew Richardson argued that our organization should support the legalization of drugs. Referring not to prescription medicines but to now-illegal recreational drugs, which he likens to a “humanitarian effort.” Yikes—there are so many things wrong with that, it’s hard to know where to begin to respond.

The Supreme Court of the United States took a sledge hammer to the separation of Church and State in March when it refused to hear an appeal by the University of Wisconsin of a suit brought by Badger Catholic, a student organization. While the university provided routine funding for the student group, it declined to pay for explicitly religious activities, including Catholic Mass and proselytizing campaigns. Last September, in a truly horrible decision, a three judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit ruled that the university's refusal to fund religious activities violated Badger Catholic’s First Amendment right to free speech.

I was driving south on 35E in St. Paul the other day and just before I took the downtown exits a billboard caught my attention. Written in big letters, that looked like they were cut from ancient parchment, was the name “Jesus”. Below his name, in bold black letters, was the proclamation: “He is the most amazingly devine man.”

From noon to 1:00 on Thursday, May 5th, Minnesota Atheists will once again hold a Day of Reason rally in the State Capitol Rotunda. This is the sixth year that we have held this celebration of the separation of church and state to protest the “Day of Prayer” event held at the same time outside on the Capitol steps.